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I wish Ford well enough: Fiorito

Now that he is ill, conventional wisdom provides
Rob Ford
with a warm blanket of sympathy; convention is for the weak or, worse, the hypocritical.

He was not struck by lightning; alcohol and drug abuse, obesity, genetics and bad judgment are his undoing.

I will not tuck him in with any of my sympathy, especially not when he has issued a tissue of falsehoods and exaggerations from his sickbed, in the hope that it would go unchallenged.

He said, “I am unable to commit to the heavy schedule required for a mayoral candidate.” He will, instead, run for council.

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Only in Fordlandia does that make sense.

He said, “I derailed the gravy train.”

He did not. He just rerouted the damn thing. He tried and tried again to use his office — make that the office of the people of Toronto — in an effort to help his friends, to help himself, and to further his private interests.

I remind you that as mayor he once tried to buy some public parkland — owned by you and me — in order to expand his private property.

Mel would not have tried that.

I remind you that he made calls to city staff on behalf of his friends. I remind you that he used city letterhead to ask lobbyists to cough up a little cash in order to support his private hobby.

Lobbyists? Show me how that isn’t one hand preparing to wash the other.

He stole time from office to coach kids he later ridiculed in one of his drunken stupors, thus making fools of all of us.

I remind you that he commandeered a city bus to take some high school football players home from a game in the rain. Could you do that for your team?

He made sure the road and culvert in front of the family business were repaired in time for the company’s anniversary. Could you do that for your business?

Gravy is gravy.

He said that he “cut unnecessary spending.” That’s been widely debunked, and not just by this newspaper.

He said he has “made government more accountable.” How can a mayor be considered “accountable” when the only way he’ll speak to the police about the Lisi affair is by way of a subpoena?

An obvious aside: why the hell is a mayor in a position to be subpoenaed in the first place?

But seriously, how is government “accountable” when its chief magistrate hides from the newspaper of record? How is government “accountable” when he consistently refused to answer questions about his schedule?

The only way any journalist could get the truth from Rob Ford is with a Freedom of Information request.

And when the press finally does piece the truth together about his activities in office, or about his sordid private life, he calls us “pathological liars.”

We are accountable.

He is not.

He said, “For the past four years I have gotten up every day thinking about our great city and how to make life just a little better for each of you.”

Each and every one of us, that is, except for cyclists, gays, the poor, and anyone with a sense of probity or high ideals.

The truth is that for a good portion of his time in office, Rob Ford was emphatically not thinking — he was drinking and doing drugs, and lying about it. Oh, but he was making life a little better for some people — the ones who provided him with drugs and booze.

He cut services, raised the cost of city programs, slashed bus routes, squandered revenue tools and raised taxes. How is that making life better?

As mayor, he thought so much about this city that council stripped him of most of his powers.

Now that he is ill, he has asked his brother to take his place in the race for the mayor’s job. He said, “Doug also believes in standing up for family no matter what.”

At last, the truth.

Doug stood up for his brother throughout all the lies associated with the crack cocaine episode, just as he covered up for Rob’s drinking.

He did this unblinkingly.

The result? A bigmouth steps into the shoes of a liar. Rob closed his statement with the observation that “Hope is a powerful thing.”

I have powerful hope.

I hope he gets better. Just as I hope the voters return him and his brother to private life.

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